Letters to the Editor
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Volaar -
I just wanted to tell you I like your posts. My husband (PhD, philosophy of religion, UVA) and I came to our individual attitudes of "theist agnosticism" from different directions (me from science, he from a call to the priesthood). We have both found different aspects of your posts to represent these complex issues well.
Thanks!
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Gnosticism
Mr? Kushana,
Sorry for the delayed reponse; you said:
Most forms of Gnosticism, Manichaeism included, derived from Judaism.
I hope Im not sounding too much like you, but to which Judaic texts are you referring?
I always considered gnosticism to be influenced by Plato, (eg the parable of the cave), an obvious source of cosmological dualism (the ontology of appearance and form).Undoubtably, there are many others, so varied were gnostics.
. Judaism is strictly monotheistic: if there is dualism, it is strictly moral, in our free choice between good and evil. Even evil is reigned by God. In Job 1.6-1.12, Satan must give account for himself and must ask permission to act.
Creation is inherently good in Judaism (Genesis). This means it is real, and not an appearance or a distortion.The fall was a moral consequence of human choice, salvation an ethical concern.
Gnosticism, generally, possesses cosmological dualism. For example we see that in the transition from spirit to matter, the world is wrought by a tragic flaw, passion, or sin in one of the Æons. Basilides intuits it as a flaw in the last sonship. What of the maternal yearnings - is the world the pregnant emanations of the inflamed and hungered passions of the female Æon Sophia? Perhaps it goes all the way to the top: it is the sin of the Great Archon, or Æon-Creator, of the Universe.
So I argue that Judaism is generally monotheistic in which dualism is a moral problem of free choice and ethics; with whatever one might generalize gnosticism to be, it is more of a cosmological split between spirit and matter.
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But What If They Are Both True, In Some Sense?
Monotheism is simply the theory of cosmological singularity in disguise. Pantheism, of which dualism is a special case, is simply the reification of humankind's motive drives held below conscious awareness. That's how I'm modelling contemporary religion and spirituality, anyway, and it seems to be working for me.
The godhead is at the root. The godhead, in order to achieve a sense of awareness and identity, must attempt to create its equal and then, further, attempt to commune with it. That creation and that communication is ongoing in temporal reality, or space-time, if you like.
It does appear, as sidebar, that God takes His/Her time in making a point, no?
The philosophical problem occurs when one deduces that in order to be the godhead, the quality of absolute perfection must follow. But I'm not yet certain that this is an absolute requirement...survivorship can connote a certain level of perfection above and beyond one's creation. The dimunition, or dilution, of perfection can be clearly seen all over creation. The concern that the godhead could expire and, therefore, be ungodlike, is really a moot point. Godhead is several orders of magnitude beyond us in creation so I'm sure that the rumors of god's death have been greatly exaggerated. And I say that for the specific reason that a godhead could not exist in time and space, but in a place of forever-ness where the only time that is real is right NOW.
It has been NOW for several billions years, I suspect.
This escapes the problems of perfection and survivorship in one fell swoop. It doesn't escape the problem of equality, however. God's intention that we, collectively, be equal to Him can not be met unless God has no flaws and thus endures forever.
The duality, or the fracturing of Now into pieces of space and time can not help but naturally follow from a conjoint need of the godhead to create awareness and, at the same time, for that awareness to experience limitation, or limited recursive capacity. This we humans experience as fear. The more we embrace and indulge our fears, the more fractured our own reality becomes. And driving this fear, if my reasoning and induction is correct, should be both our fear of scattering ourselves into nothing, or of rejoining the godhead. Too much communing or too much disharmony. Both prospects should strike fear into our hearts' equally.
Satan does not exist. Satan was made by mankind to operationalize the explanation of our communal fear and what that fear drives us to do.
So we have the ultimate reality of monotheism preserved and the subordinate reality of time and space preserved as well, explaining the appearance of duality, and more, in terms of an "unreal" reality. And even this can be explained as the temporary nature of manifestations that fall down the sinkhole that is "time" and "space".
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Belated Thank You to Alex O (and spouse)...
...as you may know, or may learn, compliments are few and far between in the blogosphere...so thank you very much!!!
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Both true in some sense?
Volaar,
Yes, I can see that if one is a true monotheist, then that singularity would imply a unity of all things under the godhead; but many monotheistic religions also distinguish between the absolute qualities of God and life on earth, but isnt that dualism and not monotheism?
Alternaitvely, a cosmic dualism splitting godhead from physical matter typically ranks god as being "true" and matter as an illusion; therefore, beyond what reality appears to be, we find god - again, a unity of all things under the godhead. But isnt that monotheism and not dualism?
The differences are ethical: if life on earth is an appearance of life on earth, then my personality is also an appearnce as Im ultimately a fragment of god. I have no separate being,no soul, no difference - its an illusion. A monothesist would argue that God created us as separate beings in a real world with responsibilties that we can ignore at our peril, but having created life on earth does not mean god is "in" the world no more than in carving a toothpick I am "in" the toothpick.
However, Im not sure you were addressing these points anyway, half the time Im just trying to work these issues out for myself.